Industry news

Convergys Corporation, a global leader in relationship management, has announced its expansion into Colombia with a state-of-the-art contact center that will provide top quality customer care services for leading corporations in the Americas. The new facility in Bogotá will bolster Convergys’ presence in Latin America, where the company already has offices and contact center facilities in Brazil, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

Bogotá has a large bilingual talent pool and advanced telecommunications and transportation infrastructure. Convergys has outfitted a facility located in one of Bogotá's top commercial areas with the latest tools in contact center technology. It is hiring for all levels of talent, including management, support staff and skilled contact center agents to begin serving clients from the site in the first quarter of 2011. Once fully staffed, the site will employ up to 2,000 customer service experts.

“Continued client demand for the high quality bilingual services Convergys provides from Latin America is driving our growth in the region,” said Jorge Robledo, Convergys Vice President of Operations in Latin America. “Bogotá boasts a highly-educated bilingual population ideally suited to help ensure that Convergys continues to meet our global clients’ current and future need for superior technical and customer support, sales, and back office services.”

New research has revealed that human resources outsourcing, including that of firms recruiting new IT staff in London, is poised for a dramatic increase over the next five years.

According to the market research report from StrategyR, the total value of outsourced recruitment activity worldwide could reach $162 billion (£100 billion) by 2015.

"The global economic meltdown forced global governments and corporations to re-evaluate business plans and strategies, whereby cost reduction has emerged as a key driving force for human resources outsourcing," the paper explains.

As well as its growing presence in the recruitment sector, there is also an increasing trend for businesses outsourcing IT operations.

HP and VMware are set to work together on cloud security - the number one concern for organisations transferring to the cloud.

The collaboration will unify security management and automate scanning procedures. This should unify procedures for identifying threats and blocking attacks.

The two firms already work together on HP's TippingPoint intrusion protection systems for VMware vSphere deployments, but the latest agreement is to integrate the systems further.

The Land Registry, the government department responsible for maintaining England and Wales' Land Register, has signed an open source data contract with software company Talend.

The Talend Integration Suite will be used to improve data integration for its business intelligence warehouse and to support the department's new business intelligence (BI) project.

Steven Philips, delivery manager at Land Registry, said: "Maintaining concise and accurate data for BI is crucial to Land Registry's operational performance and we needed a flexible and cost-effective tool that would improve data integration for the BI warehouse."

Barclays has boosted its technology staff and budget, according to the bank's full-year results.

Staff numbers increased by 1,000 from 66,000 in 2009 to 67,000 last year across the firm's global retail banking operations.

Due to economic pressures, this is not a common trend but one which is largely due to the insourcing of operations and the company's international development of IT infrastructure.

Overall administration and general expenses in the banking arm increased, up 18% from 2009's figure of £5.56bn to £6.585bn last year.

SQS Software Quality Systems announces it’s tripling the size of its software testing facility in Belfast to meet increased demand for outsourced testing services from a ‘near-shore’ site. The expansion will mean the creation of 37 new jobs.

SQS is the largest independent software testing and quality assurance provider. The Belfast facility will offer a range of services including: security testing, environment hosting, test automation and performance testing for its Irish, UK, European and US customers. It will also provide specialised expertise in banking, insurance and telecommunications.

Rob McConnell, SQS Regional Director for Northern Ireland, says: “We’ve seen a strong growth in demand for outsourcing testing services to Belfast. In addition to cost-savings, near-shoring customers benefit from highly technical resources, close proximity for site visits, a common language and time-zone, full-cultural alignment and common communication channels.”

“We’re also fulfilling the needs of organisations, such as those in the public sector and financial services, whose data needs to remain in the UK for political or legislative reasons,” Rob continues.

The SQS Belfast office was originally set-up in 2007, based on Northern Ireland’s reputation as a technology hub with a strong supply of skilled IT graduates, high-quality service provision and low-cost differential over onshore providers.

The expansion has been partially funded by Invest NI.

The “super council” between Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham will include a “rationalisation” of tech posts. It is hoped that the cuts will save £400,000 a year by losing between 10 to 12 positions which are part of a five year programme that includes other cost-cutting moves in the tech area such as adopting unified communications.

Source: http://www.publictechnology.net/sector/local-gov/ict-jobs-go-flagship-london-shared-services-partnership

Interconnector, gas pipeline operator, has signed a £28m outsourcing deal with HP.

The 10-year contract involves the full range of HP products and services, including a dual data-centre service.

"Our expectation is that the improved performance will enhance our user experience and our visibility of service quality and we estimate that it will reduce IT costs significantly over alternative solutions," said Terry Stephens, chief information officer for Interconnector.

The services will be delivered from HP's data centre in Wynyard, UK with disaster recovery through Interconnector's Data Centre in Zeebrugge, Belgium.

Wipro Technologies have announced that it has completed the implementation of an Enterprise Work and Asset Management(EWAM) platform for NV Energy, a US based energy company. This project was rolled out across NV Energy’s north and south Nevada operations covering both electricity and gas distribution businesses and Phase 1 has been completed. NV Energy is a vertically integrated utility serving 1.2 million electric customers and 145,000 gas customers in Nevada and supporting a floating population of 40 million annually.

This implementation will achieve NV Energy’s strategic objectives of standardising systems and processes across north and south Nevada operations while reducing operating costs, achieving efficiencies in managing capital and O&M work and assets.

Craig Pinneo, Project Director, Enterprise Work and Asset Management , NV Energy said “Wipro’s ability to manage large business transformation programs, its domain competency, a mature global delivery model and close alignment with our teams and strategic goals helped us in achieving this significant and complex implementation.”

Anand Padmanabhan, Senior Vice President and Global Head – Energy and Utilities, Wipro Technologies said, “We are privileged to partner with NV Energy on their strategic journey of establishing and rolling out an Enterprise wide Work and Asset Management program. This opportunity extends our footprint in the US utilities industry and positions us as a partner of choice on engagements involving transformation and end-to-end services.”

America’s top banks including Citigroup, JP Morgan and Bank of America are set to outsource IT and back office projects worth nearly $5 billion this year to India, as they seek to lower costs of complying with new regulations and integrate banking systems.

According to at least a dozen senior executives at Tata Consultancy Services , Infosys, Wipro , HCL and Cognizant, apart from outsourcing consultants advising these banks, new investments in compliance and regulatory norms, apart from ongoing integration with acquired assets are among top drivers for this spend.